Rolling Stone Unveils Short Films to Be Released on Streamer Documentary+

The slate of documentary shorts includes an Oscar-shortlisted film, a Tribeca premiere, and other exclusives to be announced.

Rolling Stone is partnering with the streaming platform Documentary+ and nonfiction studio XTR on a slate of documentary shorts to be released on the platform for free — and only some are rock docs.

The companies have unveiled five films as part of the previously announced partnership, including one shortlisted for the Oscars last year, a Tribeca 2024 premiere, and several other upcoming exclusive titles. The films blend in-depth artist profiles with examinations of past and current cultural phenomena, looking at music, politics, and more.

Among those films are “Wings of Dust,” which was on the Oscars shortlist, “All Things Metal,” which debuted at Tribeca earlier this year, and two upcoming films called “Blood and Ashes” (working title) and “Mamus.” The fifth and final film in the slate will be named at a later date.

“Rolling Stone has always been at the forefront of documenting cultural shifts and we’re honored to join forces with them on this slate,” said Justin Lacob, head of Documentary+. “Partnering with them on this collection of documentaries is an incredible opportunity to amplify stories that deserve to be told with nuance, depth, and impact.”

“We’re thrilled to partner with Documentary+ on a new slate of premium short-form documentary films,” said Jason Fine, SVP Rolling Stone Films. “Rolling Stone’s mission is to tell stories with deep reporting and a strong point of view, and the films in our first season do exactly that: from the healing power of heavy metal, ‘All Things Metal,’ to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti, ‘Blood and Ashes,’ these films are original, compelling and amplify our journalism in exciting new formats.”

Documentary+ is a free streaming platform and FAST channel dedicated exclusively to documentaries. It was launched by XTR, which has backed films like “76 Days,” “Ascension,” and this year’s “Daughters” on Netflix.

“Wings of Dust,” which drops on the platform today, October 10, tells the story of Vidal Merma, an Indigenous journalist who risks his life to protect the natural resources of ancestral lands. Director Giorgio Ghiotto’s film exposes how mining has contaminated the water in the Peruvian community of Espinar.

“All Things Metal,” which will debut October 24, follows the Patterson brothers, a family living in Santa Barbara and known for their hand-crafted ironwork. By day, they craft beautiful sculptures, and by night, they turn their workshop into a stage to rock out to heavy metal music and make music videos, all while also dealing with Tourette syndrome. Motoki Otsuka directed the film.

“Blood and Ashes,” directed by Jason Motlagh and Mark Oltmanns, drops in mid-November and chronicles Haiti’s descent into chaos and the rise of Barbecue and the G9 gang alliance. And “Mamus,” directed by Jacques Naude and set to debut in mid-December, is a portrait of the Arhuaco Indigenous community in Colombia. It flashes back to a BBC documentary from 1990 in which the Arhuaco community first made contact with the outside world, and it now picks up with them three decades later to see how advances in audio and visual tech have shaped their home in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Maria.

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